I went to the Brewer game last Friday night.  I was with my boyfriend and some friends.  My son coincidentally had tickets to go to the same game with his dad.

When Eric Gagne took the mound, it seemed that the entire crowd at Miller Park started booing.  Then Gagne gave up a home run and the crowd booed even louder.  Than he gave up a double and who would have thought that the crowd could get any louder?

That weekend, I was talking with my son and discovered that he and his dad had booed Gagne as well. I said that I hadn't, and that I thought it was kind of bad that we would boo one of our own at Miller Park.

We were in the car at the time and my son and his friend immediately started explaining, with great exuberance on both their parts, why he got booed.  "He's pitching terrible!"  "He used to be good!"  "We are paying him eight million dollars!"  "If it weren't for him we could afford Sabathia!"  And so on and so forth.

I said that I thought that if people were upset with how he was pitching--and thought that he shouldn't be--then people should be upset with management, not Gagne.  After all, I reasoned, he is doing the best he can and it is not as if he wants to do horrible and have all of Miller Park booing at him.  At this point both their arms shot up in the air (How cute is that?) and they went into great detail about how much he is being paid.  Since he is being paid so much he shouldn't be pitching so badly, they argued.

I asked, then, that if they made the Select team for their little league--because they played really well at try-outs--and then they ended up being terrible, should I boo them?  They said that they weren't being paid eight million dollars.  I said that I thought that Gagne would probably rather make five million and pitch well then make eight million and pitch terribly. (I've since learned that he was paid 10 million, but why split hairs?)

Regardless of how much money he makes, he's still just a human being out there doing the best he can.  What is he supposed to do, go to Brewer management and say, "I really stink. I quit."  Seems to me that he should keep trying.

Finally, I had to pull out my big guns:  "But he has a mother!  How do you think she feels?"

There was more talk on the boys' part about steroids and other questionable behavior and quite frankly, they know way more about baseball than I do.  In the end we had to agree to disagree.  But it was a fun way to spend a car ride.

Earlier this week, before Monday's game, Gagne made a $50,000 donation to the MACC Fund.  It was the largest single gift ever made by an athlete in the MACC fund's 32-year history.  I hope the crowd didn't boo him.